


With Others' Hands

by jat_sapphire



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Episode: s 01e15 Shore Leave, F/M, First Time, M/M, Mind Meld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:18:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before and after the episode "Shore Leave."  Kirk thinks he's hallucinating.</p><p>Originally published in the zine <i>Th'y'la 23</i> in 2003.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Others' Hands

The first time it happened, Kirk was in a woman's bed, lost in sensation, every inch of his skin beating with his pulse, balls tight, cock swelling--a palm slid back under his floating rib, around to the small of his back, fingers splaying, and he said, "Spock," and came.

One moment of perfection: the heat of that otherworldly body, the brush of his elegant, logical mind. But it was only a fantasy, and the next moment the woman twisted under him, squirmed out of the bed, and stood there outraged, half-crying, frustrated; that was so ugly that the other nearly slipped from his memory.

Nearly.

The next time it had happened even earlier in the encounter. He'd met Pendra, Areel's friend and colleague, gone to dinner with her, been perfectly happy flirting, smiling, listening as her voice lilted and grew more seductive. He watched the rise and fall of her lashes as she glanced at his eyes, his mouth, his throat as he swallowed … his hands as he picked up his wine glass or his fork ... his ass, he thought, when they were caught in the crowd as they exited the restaurant. Oh, yes, she was as much a connoisseur as he, and the heat of her gaze was all her own.

Still, as he bent later to kiss the long, fragrant curve of her neck, as she bent her head back and threaded fingers into his hair, suddenly the skin he tasted was sweet, not salt; the hands that guided and caressed felt larger, their touch so much warmer and more thrilling; the voice in his ears was so _deep_ and seemed to vibrate clear through his body--

He pulled away, sat up. "I'm sorry," he said. She stared. "I, uh, I've just remembered something."

"A wife?" Her voice had sharpened, and he couldn't blame her but couldn't possibly explain, either. Instead he reached out, slowly so that she could evade the touch if she wanted to, but she held still and he brushed the damp spot where his mouth had been.

"I'm going crazy, I think," he said. Then he smiled, because in his line of work that had better be a joke.

But it wasn't a joke. He could have worked himself into cold sweats thinking of it if he let himself. He'd just had a _hallucination_ , for pity's sake, and what if he started having them while he was on duty? On a landing party? On the bridge?

And then he did.

An ordinary day, ordinary planet survey, and he wasn't even down there himself. But after the last three dangerous months, he was still tense. He leaned on one elbow in his command chair, bending over the padd with Yeoman Barrows and trying to distract himself with her flowery perfume and soft voice. His neck and shoulders were sore with the effort of looking relaxed, and when he straightened up, pain jabbed down his spine. 

"Something wrong?" Spock's voice, from behind him.

"A ... _kink_ in my back." Then hands he knew touched him, fingers dug into the sore spots and rubbed. "That's it." He felt the fibers of his muscles loosen, as if by magic, and as he pleaded, "No, little, little higher, please--" the amusement behind him was as deep a heat as the massage made. Those wonderful, probing fingers moved up his back, exactly right, and there the heels of Spock's hands pressed in, "--push, push hard--" and he struggled to remember where he was because all he wanted, suddenly, was to rest his head on Spock, lean back and just let go. " _Dig_ in there, Mr. Spock--"

And then Spock took a step forward, a good half-meter away and on the wrong side of the chair altogether. Though Kirk could still have sworn he felt them on his back, Spock's hands were clasped behind him; he turned a remote, Vulcan face on Kirk's discomfiture. 

So it had to be all in Kirk's head. He felt the small chilly hands just as they withdrew. "Thank you, Yeoman, that's sufficient," he said, aware that his voice was sour and that poor Barrows was almost as mortified as he was. 

Was he crazy? Or was he right that Spock had ... well, he had no idea what Spock could have done. 

This turned out to be a bad time to be unsure whether he could tell wishes from observations, fantasy from reality. The damn planet took every passing wish and threw it in their faces, sent every fantasy walking, talking, kissing, fighting, like the real thing. Spock kept him alive and smiled at the showgirls that landed on him like passing butterflies, and kept out of it. Wasn't that all Kirk could ask?

No. Of course not. But he fled his own questions, followed Ruth, and left Spock to the virtual girls, if he wanted them.

They walked in the fragrant fields and woods, listened to birds and spoke nonsense to each other. She asked, "Do you remember the last time we met, Jim darling?" as if reminiscing, but he knew that it was his cue to supply more information to the planet's software.

He also knew that if he were going to enjoy this, he couldn't think about the software. But he couldn't bring himself to believe in the conversation, either, so he found himself taking the blossom back that he'd given her, plucking a few petals as if making a wish. She watched his fingers.

"Will you do anything I ask? Anything I imagine?"

"Yes, of course, Jim darling."

It didn't surprise him to stroll a little farther and find the hot-tub garden from Pendra's hotel suite, which they'd never gotten to the point of using. It was the most shamelessly luxurious place he'd ever been, and anyway, he'd been thinking about ... that night.

Groundcover surrounded the marble edge of the tub, smelling sweet as flowers, spicy as herbs, and growing thicker than a golf green, soft enough to lie on if they chose. The water was also perfumed and suffused with oil, bubbling in the center and gently steaming. A rosy silk canopy waved in the breeze, half of it over the tub and the other half over a wide, low pallet covered in some velvety material, the same shade of green as the groundcover.

Ruth moved toward the tub, but Kirk caught her hand. "We'll bathe later," he said, and drew her down on the pallet, which had a springier mattress than he had expected.

That lace pantsuit of hers had been complicated to get off, in real life, but now the seams were giving or the front splitting, or something--it was gone as soon as he wished it gone. She felt as soft as he remembered and even smelled and tasted almost right. "Oh, Ruth," he said, speaking through the android to his old remembered love, who had wanted his skinny teenage body and been gentle with his yearning heart. "You're sweet, so sweet." He stroked her, lay on his side next to her, kissed her round breast, almost-- almost--believing.

"You wish for another," she said evenly, something his real Ruth would never have said.

"No," he lied. Mumbled it against her skin, sucked in her nipple, felt it harden in his mouth and swirled his tongue around it. Let it slip between his lips with a little pop and repeated, fervently, " _no_ ," because if there was one thing he would not be able to bear, it was an android Spock conjured up by this damn planet.

She stroked his hair in silence. That was good. He worked over her as though she were a project he was trying to finish on deadline, and she purred, sighed, and squirmed, less and less like Ruth, but he wasn't the boy he'd been, either, so that was all right. He felt her skin, warm and fragrant, salty and smooth. She was just a woman under him, a doll that stroked and coaxed and let him do anything he wanted. He sucked hard and fucked her mouth and her ass, getting a bit rough but raising no bruises, biting down but never breaking the supple, shapely ... material.

He came, one of her legs over his shoulder and the other loosely round his waist, his own knees under him and his arms braced, sweating, dripping onto her unmarred, unruffled body. 

And it was then, as he closed his eyes, tasting the perfumed air in the back of his throat and feeling vaguely sick-- _then_ , of all times, that he felt a comforting stroke up his thighs, over his hips, onto his back, felt broad palms, long fingers, dry, hot, and somehow _clean._

He reared back, kneeling up, horror drenching over him like icewater. "I said no!" He grabbed for her wrists, pulled them together and stared down at how small and unresisting the little pink palms and curled fingers were. Not Spock's hands, in some nasty mutated android version, as he'd half suspected. And the wide, submissive gaze under him was absolutely not Spock, though not Ruth either, just a machine which could bear no blame even if it had chosen entirely the wrong brain waves to respond to.

Kirk let the slim wrists go and stood up, paced a little back and forth, ignoring his own nudity and the android's stare. He didn't know what to do. He was afraid even to think. Rubbing his forehead with the heel of one hand, he kept pacing.

"Jim," said a low, rasping voice.

Kirk's head whipped up; he meant to glare at the android, but Spock's voice had come from Spock, standing beside the hot tub.

Or something that closely resembled Spock was there, anyway.

"Jim," this vision repeated.

A traitorous part of Jim Kirk's mind spoke: _Why not? If you're fantasizing it, hallucinating it, if you've conjured up a Spock doll as well as a Ruth one, why not?_ He even took a step nearer before he forced himself to remember the sickly, second-guessing, distasteful imitation of pleasure he'd just felt. "If I want mindless fuckdoll sex, I don't need to come halfway across the galaxy for it, or dress it up like my first officer," he said, enunciating clearly.

Spock blinked, then drew himself even straighter and clasped his hands behind his back. "As you say, Captain." He'd looked just like that on the bridge when Kirk had mistaken Barrows' hands for his. 

"Very lifelike," Kirk said, his own voice just as icy.

There was a pause, as they just looked at each other. The awning flapped a little. The hot tub bubbled.

At last, Spock said, "I am not a projection of the planet's recreational software. Jim. I am real. I followed you."

This might be true. Kirk tilted his head to one side, considering it. "Well. You found me." He gave a little nervous chuckle. "Naked."

"Indeed."

That was just like Spock. But then it would be. Glancing at the pallet, Kirk saw that Ruth had vanished in that dreamlike way that this planet seemed to specialize in. He took the few steps necessary and sat down on the edge of the mattress, which made him feel somewhat less exposed, anyway.

"I regret that I seem to have interrupted your pleasure," Spock said.

Kirk opened his mouth, then shut it, then found himself asking anyway, "If I'm not dreaming you up now, was I before? Or did you--were you--" He didn't even know what words to use.

"Yes," answered Spock.

"Yes?" Kirk repeated. " _Yes?_ You mean ... yes?"

"Jim, I ...." and that was how Kirk knew that it was really Spock and that Kirk himself had never hallucinated at all. Because it was entirely uncharacteristic of Spock to be at a loss for words. Kirk would never imagine that.

And an innocent Spock would not have such an unlikely problem. Or stand there dumbly as if waiting for a formal reprimand.

"Why?" was the only word in Kirk's mind.

Spock was so quiet for so long that Kirk wondered if he somehow hadn't asked aloud. He concentrated on the movement of his own lips and tongue, the sound of his own voice, repeating carefully, "Why?"

"I ... wanted to touch you. I wanted it to be me who touched you. Always. Even if I never, if I might not."

Kirk nodded, thinking through what each of those hard-won sentences meant.

"Always and never," Spock almost whispered.

Kirk wished he could say that Spock's 'never' was wrong, that he could have asked any time, that Kirk would have said yes and they could have been lovers without subterfuge, but Spock deserved truth even now, and Kirk could not be entirely sure. He couldn't really imagine Spock asking, so he didn't know how he would have responded. Then. Any of those 'then's, except--"You could have rubbed my back," he suggested.

"No, I could not."

His face had looked like that on the bridge, like _Not me! Never!_ \--Kirk remembered it. Now he dropped his eyes to his own bare knees, moved his feet a little in the crisp, cool groundcover. 

"Why did you follow me?" Kirk needed to know. If Spock couldn't even rub his back--though he could put his hands nearly everywhere while they were running from the plane, while he was moving Kirk wherever he liked, it had seemed, with that strength of his.

"I thought you would be alone."

Kirk snorted. Cupped his mouth and nose as if he'd sneezed, but couldn't help one more little snuffle of mirth. Alone was hardly how he'd felt.

"But for the android," Spock conceded, and it was almost like catching him out in a conversation on the bridge, for just a moment, and then Spock's eyes slid away and it wasn't at all like any kind of conversation they'd had before. 

Kirk wondered, but didn't make it a question: "You wanted to watch."

Spock was the one who raised a hand to his face, this time, and that too was so uncharacteristic that it mesmerized Kirk. He tracked each long finger across the lips, cheek, chin. Spock seemed to find no solace in the movement. "I ... yes."

"I don't commonly have sex, even--" and _he'd_ almost said 'alone' this time-- "even with a toy, for a, a witness."

"It was not that--" Spock swallowed. "I wanted to see when I touched--when I made it seem that I had touched you. I have very little ... sense of your reaction."

"How do you do it anyway?"

And Spock had a moment of normality, then, the raised eyebrow and tilt of his head that said, _This is a digression, Captain._ And actually it was. "No," Kirk said, "never mind."

"A sort of link," Spock explained anyway. "A different sort of link."

Different from what? From the mindmelds they'd had in the past, all clearly for some purpose, all starting with that touch on his face? Kirk rubbed the spot on his temple, closed his eyes, thinking of it. Different from the kind of link Spock would have needed to _really_ touch Kirk?

Or to want to really touch Kirk?

There was only one way to find out. He cleared his throat and said, "Well, you're here. And I'm here. You wouldn't need any--need a _link_ to touch me now. You could just. Touch." He lowered his hand, looked over, and Spock was still beside the tub, but staring now. Eyes so dark and wide, brows both up a little, so that nothing but intensity could be read from his face.

Well, if he were going to stare--

Kirk leaned back on his elbows, moved his feet apart, then slowly shifted his weight to his left elbow, so he could move his right hand to his own hip, sliding to the thigh. "Or, if you really prefer, you could watch. If that's what you came to do."

For some reason, looking on while Spock decided wasn't possible, so Kirk shut his eyes. His hand barely moved against his own skin. He imagined that he could hear it, just a little, with the sounds of water and rippling silk. After a moment, he felt Spock's looming presence, very near, and trusted his instinct this time. Waited.

Spock's voice was almost anguished: "It's ... Jim ... it is _biology_." 

His face matched, too, in a restrained, Vulcan sort of way, and Kirk knew this was as serious for his friend as it had been for him when he thought he was going crazy. "Vulcan biology?" he asked, just for confirmation, and Spock's nod gave it. 

Still, Kirk had no idea what that meant, and no more notion whether sex was a good idea or the worst of his life, about to trigger some species difference that would ruin the best command team he'd ever seen, much less been part of, and the best friendship of his life. But when had he ever played it safe? 

When had Spock? When Kirk asked him to risk, he always had. Before.

Kirk met Spock's eyes, and they were full of a hunger that looked wholly illogical.

"What _about_ Vulcan biology?"

"It is a thing no outworlder may know."

Kirk lunged up, grabbed at Spock, got one hand, held on tight. "The _hell_ with that, Spock. I want us to touch. For you to touch me." He pulled, and Spock resisted. "I want _you_ to be the one who touches me."

Spock's other hand splayed across Kirk's face. Kirk leaned into it. _Yes. Have my thoughts. But my body too, Spock, for real ... with your own hands ... this once._

Something broke, with a suddenness that was almost audible.

Kirk was flat on his back. Thick, smooth hair was between his fingers. His own ribs--hips--legs--ass--cock--were being stroked, held, fondled--and these were really, truly Spock's hands. The skin was callused and hot, a little damp just in the center of the palms, the fingers strong and active, the nails blunt and thick. The touch kept moving, unpredictably, touching off trails of sparks like a net of fuses holding Kirk's body.

He groped to touch Spock but could not. One of those completely familiar hands held Kirk's wrists to the mattress, then the fingers unwrapped and the palm circled against the soft pulse-point, and that touch seemed to go on, holding him in place though Spock's hands had moved. And they stroked below and up his ribs, too, movements that seemed to repeat while his ass was held and opened, probed, stroked--how many hands did Spock have, anyway? This was insane--

\--insanely good. Kirk writhed and pushed, always into the touch--wrapped in Spock, submerged, lost. He felt movement and didn't know whether he was thrusting or being lifted. Wet heat and he didn't know if his tongue or his fingers or his cock was being sucked. As passion burned and surged inside, Spock's touch outside drew and managed it as if Kirk were a static-electricity toy. He gasped, flashed like lightning, and orgasmed from head to toe, or felt as though he had. Plasma explosion. Total destruction of planet.

He lay with his eyes closed, because the mattress under him was spinning around and he was too enervated to lift his eyelids anyway. Maybe Spock could do it for him. "Mmn," he said, vaguely conscious that it was not much of a request.

He felt Spock over him, apparently spinning at the same rate, and wondered a little why it was so easy to tell where the Vulcan was. Body heat? Sound? He was close, anyway, and bent closer still. A rough, fever-warm cheek settled against Kirk's forehead, lifted again, and a softer pair of--must be lips--touched between his eyebrows, rested there. "Jim." He felt the lips open, breath puff out, lips close again as the syllable was spoken.

Kirk mumbled something and couldn't tell himself what it was. Tried again. "Ss, Spock. Was amm, amazing."

"I'm--" Spock's mouth lifted away-- "gratified that you think so."

Kirk blinked, to prove to himself that he could, then did it a few more times to encourage his eyes to focus. Spock was propped up on one elbow, a position Kirk had never seen him in before, but otherwise he looked normal: breathing evenly, fully clothed, composed. Except for a hint of fire in his eyes and a quirk at one corner of his mouth.

Reaching up, Kirk put his index finger right on that quirk, felt it move in something very like a smile, traced a line to Spock's jaw, over the edge and down to the neckband of his uniform tunic. "My turn next," and Kirk got the words out fairly clearly, sounding only tipsy this time instead of destroyed.

Spock sat up on a quick breath that was too much like a sigh. He looked across Kirk's body, perhaps at the tub, opened his mouth and then closed it. Kirk swallowed, trying physically to suppress the disappointment that knotted in his throat and gripped the top of his lungs. He swallowed again, and said, "Vulcan biology?" Whatever that meant, beside 'no.'

"I am in an impossible position. I have ... obligations ... necessities ... that I cannot explain. I may yet be spared ... but unless ...." As unfinished as that sounded, Spock's jaw clenched so hard that the tendons stood out from collarbone to ear, and there were no more words.

Kirk sat up too, bending his knees and pushing his fingers through his hair--it was now completely tangled and dripping wet. He could smell himself, a sweaty human animal. An outworlder.

"Well." He rubbed a chin that was still tender from the android-Finnegan's blow, though the bruises and scrapes hadn't bothered Kirk during sex. "I'd better use that tub." And he'd better keep his mouth shut. He'd been dumped before. A number of times, in fact. He'd stayed friends with most--well, a lot of them. Because he knew better than to sling useless recriminations around.

His foot, moving, came in contact with Spock's leg, and he left it there. Spock's expression now was a sad wariness that Kirk could hardly stand to see, though he knew that once he thought about all this, he'd probably be mad as hell at the Vulcan. But humans could control emotions too, and right now Spock looked far too miserable to take anything out on him. But just to keep the record straight: "I think you will have to tell me, someday, what the hell's going on."

"If I must, I will." A Spock-style concession, or a Vulcan-style one, which was to say none at all. "It is not my secret."

No outworlder may know. Vulcans could be such xenophobic _jerks_.

Kirk saw Spock wince a little, thought _touch telepaths_ , and drew his foot away. "Will this link thing go on?" Would every thought he had slip through every casual touch?

"I don't know." Spock's voice was dull, now. "I suspect, however, that this effect is only temporary. After what we--I--have just done."

Kirk stood, facing the tub. "Speaking of temporary effects, is this the end of the phantom hands?" Then he turned, wanting to stare Spock down if he could for this part. "The next time you touch me, I want it to be _your_ hands. And if you can't do that again, then it's no touch at all."

Spock dropped his eyes and nodded. "It was illogical. Unethical. I shall not do it again." And then, very softly, as if he didn't even expect Kirk to hear, "I could not bear to, now."

That wasn't really an answer Kirk wanted, but he supposed it was the only possible one. He turned, walked to the tub, intensely aware of the groundcover and the breeze, resolutely not looking back at Spock. He got in, lowering himself slowly, as the water really was hot, the edge of it almost cutting as it moved over his skin. Then he did look back at the pallet, only to find that Spock had vanished as quietly as Ruth had.

Not real?

No, Kirk knew it had been real. 

He gave himself to the water's touch, which wasn't what he truly wanted either, and tried not to speculate about Vulcan biology that outworlders were not allowed to know.


End file.
